A man holds his crying child close to him as migrants force their way through police lines at Tovarnik station for a train to take them to Zagreb on Sept. 17, 2015 in Tovarnik, Croatia. (Jeff J. Mitchell, Getty Images)

I will not here be discussing the fear-mongering against refugees by too many politicians. Nor will I be entering the debate about how to respond to Daesh — the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). There must be strong response, yet the drift towards closed borders and greater war is ominous.

I want to instead contrast two attitudes involved in response to terror and to refugees. Actually, they are far more than “attitudes” — they are deep passions and foundational forces in human life. And while discussing such passions may seem abstract, I suggest that even in the short term they are crucial for the adequacy or failure of our responses.

Reverence is the first of these passions, and revenge the second.

Reverence, I learned from one of my wisest teachers, “is the womb of nobility” — the womb of real justice and peace. Later, another wise teacher showed me what Aeschylus taught about the implacable furies of revenge. His Oresteia, 2500 years ago, enacted the literally endless and continually tragic cycle fueled by revenge. Yet it simultaneously celebrated the birth in Athens of the wisdom (and nobility) of seeking justice through law, courts, and difficult human agreement — a birth conceived in reverence for Athena and brought to fruition at least to some degree in any decently human city.

Given the headlines, these platitudes may just seem academic trivia. Yet the Oresteia remains among the greatest achievements of the Western thought and imagination. And not just in some “artsy” way. It still shows us both the depth of our hunger for revenge, and the tragic folly of satisfying that hunger.

From left sitting, Imam Abdur-Rahim Ali of the North East Denver Islamic Center, the Rev. Dr. Jim Ryan of the Colorado Council of Churches, Rabbi Richard Rheins of the Rocky Mountain Rabbinical Council and the Right Rev. Robert J. O’Neill of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado listen during an interfaith service of “remembrance, healing and hope” at St. John’s Cathedral in Denver with religious leaders and faithful of Christianity, Islam and Judaism for the Sept. 11 terrorist attack 10-year anniversary. (Daniel Petty, The Denver Post)

After 1,800 years of persecution at Christian hands, we Jews are challenged by any love directed at us from Christians.

Nonetheless, many of us have made peace with Evangelicals expressing their love and admiration for Jews and for Israel. But Catholic love for Jews, well, that’s a different story.

But there it was, Father Guiseppe, a Catholic priest, was offering me an all-expenses paid trip to Israel for a conference of rabbis, bishops, cardinals and priests. When I asked what he wanted in return, his response was, “Nothing, we recognize that Christianity has its roots in the Jewish faith and we, therefore, want dialogue with rabbis. This trip and conference is simply a gesture of love from us to you.”

Although I was deeply skeptical, his sincerity coupled with my constant desire to visit the Holy Land would not allow me to reject his offer.

So, last week I traveled to Israel for a historic meeting, organized by the Catholic Church’s Neocatechumenal Way, of Jewish religious leaders, from Reform to ultra-Orthodox, with leaders of the Catholic Church at Domus Galilaeae on the shores of the Kineret.

We ate, prayed, danced, and dialoged together for three days. From this gathering it became apparent that there are large elements within the contemporary Catholic Church that have real love and admiration for the Jewish people. As I sat at the conference it occurred to me that, although the Neocatechumenal Way stated that they wanted to learn from us, the learning ought to go both ways.

The old prejudices Catholics had toward Jews were broken 50 years ago with Nostre Aetate of the Second Vatican Council, which eschewed and rejected any form of anti-semitism and, in part, declared that the “Church cannot forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree [Judaism] onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles.”

If this newfound understanding by Catholics of their relationship with Judaism does not bring us together perhaps a common threat should.

Beyond the common threat of radical Islam, all religions in the West are facing the challenges posed by secularism, atheism, social media and the ubiquity of information, thanks to the Internet. Based on last year’s Pew research study, Judaism is threatened by these forces perhaps to a larger degree than other religions.

While after centuries of persecution, our suspicion of Catholics is hard to overcome, we cannot allow old animosities to hold us back from seizing new opportunities. In the final analysis, there is much we can learn from each other in how to confront, and hopefully overcome, the common challenges we face.

This does not mean, God forbid, that we should try and mimic other religions. That was a mistake Reform Judaism made more than one hundred years ago when they changed the layout of the synagogue and brought in the organ in an effort to ape Protestant churches.

Nonetheless, in terms of the general sense of offering spirituality, faith and meaning, many religions have much in common. How these religious ideals can be compellingly presented in a secular society in the Internet Age is the difficulty we all face. What works for one religion might possibly be adapted to work for others as well. In this sense, the openness of the Catholic Church toward Jews and Judaism offers us new opportunities for dialogue that can be truly worthwhile and bear significant fruit for the continuity and renewal of both faith communities.

The Neocatechumenal Way headed by Kiko Argüello is one of the forces within the Catholic Church that has had success in engaging lapsed Catholics and bringing them closer to their faith. They believe that some of their success has come about because of the ideas and practices that they have borrowed from Judaism. This conference offered them an opportunity to deepen that knowledge and bond with Judaism. Perhaps what they have learned from our tradition we need to relearn as well.

Whatever the case may be, this historic event moved us further away from a dialogue of competition, evangelizing and dogma and toward a dialogue of learning from each other in an atmosphere of respect and love. This signals the beginning of new, deeply positive, chapter in interfaith dialogue as well as in our relationship with the Catholic Church.

No doubt there will be resistance to this new level of common dialogue and learning, but as this blossoms, as I hope it will, not only will Jews and Catholics be the beneficiaries, humanity as a whole will be better off.

Comments Off on Jewish wariness on hold: The benefits of cardinals and rabbis dancing together

Pakistan women demonstrators wear burqas and hold a sword in protest against the printing of satirical sketches of the Prophet Muhammad by French magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Lahore on January 20, 2015. Pakistan’s parliament on Jan. 15 condemned French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for printing a “blasphemous” cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed as religious groups held rallies throughout the country, including one during which the Tricolour was burnt. (AFP PHOTO / Arif ALIArif Ali/AFP/Getty Images)

Why do we in the U.S so easily connect “their” terrorist violence with religion yet ignore some pretty obvious connections between “our” use of violence and religious piety?

The terror murders of French cartoonists have again brought the specter of religiously motivated violence into the news. Yet those who speak with greatest condemnation about such Islamist violence often get it wrong. Indeed, any comment that claims a simple correlation between religion and violence has almost certainly gotten it wrong.

Yet those who make such claims about Islam these days have at least gotten one thing very right. For contrary to our country’s predominantly secular tone in speaking about foreign affairs, religion in fact everywhere plays a very important role in both war and peace, albeit a complicated one. Indeed, once the again-current images of “them” with their idolatrous cries (“Allahu akbar”) have receded, most of us remember this complexity.

If we take the time to look, for instance, we find that the vast majority of Muslims and of Muslim leaders in Europe have once again condemned the Paris terror committed in the name of their faith. (I have been particularly impressed by the range of comment from Muslim leaders carried in the Huffington Post’s religion report: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/religion/ – something missing in most US media.) And if we also take the time to think, we’ll remember too well the many times that Christianity and recently also Judaism, to say nothing about Hindu and Buddhist nationalisms, have motivated and legitimated murder in the name of faith.

Of course such reflection would also remind us of the far greater role of religion in motivating work for peace. Think of contemporary names like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis. Think even more of the many, many ways that religious faith, Muslim or Christian, Western or Eastern, has continually contributed to histories and cultures that maintain daily patterns of respect and restraint, compassion and charity, in the lives of the billions with whom we share this planet.
(For a very good read on the whole topic see Karen Armstrong’s most recent and typically very detailed study, “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence,” or her more available essay, “The Myth of Religious Violence.”

So, yes. There clearly is a connection between religious extremism and contemporary violence. It has been much studied and seems widely understood – whether we’re talking about Tamil Hindu suicide bombers in Sri Lanka or Christian abortion clinic bombers in the U.S., about fanatical Israeli settlers or competing Palestinian fanatics. Such religiously linked violence is widely and rightly condemned, even if not yet sufficiently condemned.

Covered in prayer shawls, ultra-Orthodox Jewish men pray during the holiday of Sukkot, as one worshipper holds an etrog at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem’s Old City, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2014. According to Jewish tradition, Jews are commanded to bind together a palm frond, or “lulav,” with two other branches, along with an “etrog,” a lemon-like citrus fruit, that make up the “four species” used in holiday rituals. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

The alarming success ISIS has had in conquering territory in the Iraq and Syria coupled with our current inability to confront or hold them back is deeply troubling.

Early this year, many of us watched in horror as ISIS carried out acts of unspeakable evil and posted them to Facebook and other social media sites. Many of us asked why the United States government was silent when it came to this horrific group. We were alarmed when State Department statements and briefing papers made no mention of this threat.

While Israel was fighting a war against Hamas early in the summer the Obama administration and the rest of the “civilized” world were busy condemning Israel for excessive force, while they were silent about the barbarism of ISIS.

President Obama now wants us to believe that while those of us with a Facebook account were aware of what ISIS was doing, the U.S. intelligence community was not. It seems to me that there is more to it then that: This was a case of willful ignorance and that ignorance continues to this day.

This article is not meant to be an attack on the president of the United States, and neither am I a partisan, but this administration has made some critical errors that has led directly to the frightening situation we currently find ourselves in. Worst of all, however, it is unaware that is it is making these mistakes and thus continues to make them. To be clear, the logic that leaving the Iraqis to their own devices will force them to defend their country against radicals like ISIS is flawed.

Here is why: Subservient societies do not easily transition to become autonomous. Freedom is not just a state of being, it is a state of mind. One can be physically free yet mentally enslaved. One cannot just take societies that have been enslaved to a dictator for centuries and give them democracy in the belief that freedom will reign and that the newly liberated society will put their lives on the line to defend their liberties.

The Biblical story of liberation is instructive here. According to the Biblical account it took 10 miraculous plagues and the splitting of a sea for the Israelites to be freed from Egyptian slavery. But that was not the end of the saga. The Israelites then spent 40 years in the desert before the transition from slaves to free people was complete.

It is paradoxical ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is using the same terror practices against Christians which the Christians used against Jews and Muslims five centuries earlier. Convert or die or leave, enforced with unimaginable brutality.

Shortly after the advent of Islam in the seventh century, the Moors captured and controlled an area which is now southern Spain.

Muslims, Arabs, Berbers, and Jews more or less peacefully coexisted with each other for six centuries while remaining at odds with the Catholics in neighboring territories.

Under a unified military alliance with the Catholic Church, Spanish and French royalty pushed the Moors out of Iberia, culminating with the fall of Granada in 1492. Prior to Grenada’s demise, a series of discriminatory laws had been enacted by Spanish monarchs discriminating against Jews and Muslims. The Inquisition, or “The Edict of Expulsion,” was put into effect the same year, giving Jews and Muslims the option of converting to Catholicism or leaving Spain.

Many Jews and most Muslims who did not convert went to safe havens in the Ottoman Empire, primarily along the North African coast, but also to Turkey and places now considered the Middle East — places where other Jews had lived in peace for centuries. Although Jews were an underclass in the Ottoman Empire, they were never threatened because of their religion, and many families thrived in what became modern-day Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

A general view of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Psagot near Ramallah, Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. The Palestinians’ “extreme and reckless” rejection of an Israeli suggestion that some Jewish settlers remain in a future Palestinian state proves that they don’t want peace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday. The harshly worded statement follows a flurry of back-and-forth condemnations sparked by an Associated Press report that Netanyahu believes all Jewish settlers should have the right to remain in their homes in a future Palestine. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

I have always spoken about “Israel/Palestine.” A new book has caused me to change that rhetorical strategy. Yes, I still want a just peace between Israel and Palestine. But I’m convinced now that the focus must be on the Palestinian people – making them, rather than Israel, the center of learning and awareness. So this essay is about four steps toward a just peace.

Step 1: The Book.

I strongly recommend “Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland” by Pamela J. Olson (Seal Press, 2013). The title is misleading, but the subtitle tells it all. In 2003, Olson took what she thought would be a typical “finding oneself” backpacking trip through the Middle East after graduating from Stanford. By accident she found herself spending time in a small farming village in the northern West Bank (Palestine). Soon she was back for a two-year stay, working for a non-violent political party created as a secular, corruption-free alternative to Hamas and Fatah.

I’ve read a fair amount about the history and recent conflict in Palestine. I’m no expert, but I try to stay informed. For some years I’ve realized that, while there is much blame on both sides, Israel is, in fact, today’s Goliath, supported by the American-Jewish establishment’s Israel Lobby and by U.S. foreign policy, especially by disastrous amounts (reportedly $3 billion a year) of military aid.

This one book didn’t change my mind. Nor do I think anyone should read only one book or about only one side of the present conflict. Still, this book would be a very good place to start. I don’t intend to summarize the book. Let me instead turn to someone who really is an expert, international affairs scholar Richard Falk.

Here are his opening and closing comments about this “indispensable book” on Palestine/Israel:

“I realize that, without knowing it, I have long waited for this book, although I could not have imagined its lyric magic in advance of reading. It is a triumph of what I would call ‘intelligent innocence,’ the great benefits of a clear mind, an open and warm heart, and a trustworthy moral compass that draws sharp lines between good and evil while remaining ever sensitive to the contradictory vagaries of lives and geographic destinies … .”

I have the following daydream: If everyone in America could just sit down quietly and read this book, there would be such an upsurge of outrage and empathy that the climate of opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict would finally change for the better … . At the very least, as many people as possible should read the book, and if your reaction is similar to mine, give a copy to friends and encourage them to spread the word.

Olson’s book really is a love story – born of compassion for the sufferings and oppression of the Palestinian people, which she presents in shocking but believable detail, even as she acknowledges and, at times details, the suffering of many Israelis. But the love story is born far more from her growing respect and admiration for Palestinians whom she and we meet in the course of her sojourn.

The first step, then, is really not just this book, though, again, it’s a good place to start. It’s rather a step into the kind of reading, listening, and learning which goes beyond the Israeli-focused narrative that dominates our media and political discussion. A step which opens mind and heart to the other side, the repressed underside of the present conflict.

A Syrian rebel fighter points his gun towards pro-regime fighters as he holds a position in a building on September 26, 2013 in Syrian eastern town of Deir Ezzor. (AP)

More than four months ago, analysts perceived that the United States might be poised for a possible strike against the Syrian Government.

Since that time, and knowing the background of our involvement as a government and army in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East (Egypt, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) and the mid-Far East (Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.), and knowing that President Barack Obama’s first campaign was to stop any American armed interventions in the world, I knew that a drastic change in the foreign policy of our current administration is being considered for whatever reason — right or wrong.

Consequently, I started exchanging visits with people of good will (Jews, Christians and Muslims), hosting inter-religious and ecumenical prayer services, getting together with prominent Arab-American people in Colorado, Lebanese-American people, as well as other professional experts and friends from different nations in the Middle East. These efforts were to try to form a coalition to help our administration and government develop a better understanding of the consequences of any probable involvement in the Middle East at this point and how it might be detrimental, first, to our legacy, safety, economic interests and national security as Americans.

Therefore, we got with good, trusted and impartial people, such as lobbyists, former and current public figures who worked in the Middle East, and some concerned and knowledgeable friends. We started formulating a “white paper” that states our practical beliefs as people coming from different religions, nations, and ethnicities to officially try to help our government develop a better understanding of what is going on in the Middle East, especially in Syria.

The paper, “People For Peace in Syria,” is a proposal that was sent to the president, the U.S. State Department Congress. It seeks an alternative vision, involvement and a role of being the peacemaker and the protector of human rights in the Middle East. The paper is far from being political, yet it gives outlines to politicians on how to pursue what is right and how to reconcile our interests as Americans with our American principles — moral, religious, economic, political and social.

The paper encourages the U.S. government to not engage in any military intervention under any circumstance — at least not initiated by us. The United States cannot engage itself any longer with sadness in the world. We do not want any military action before solving a misunderstanding of what is right and wrong. It is not wise to take action now where there is obviously a misapplication of justice and democracy and misconception of the anthropological, social, political, ethnic and religious individual character of the different constituent nations and groups in the Middle East.

The world is watching with a sense of horror at events unfolding in Syria and Egypt.

Just this past week in Syria there have been credible allegations of chemical weapons use against citizens. In Egypt protesters have been killed in the streets of Cairo by their own military. Yet it seems that we in the West are powerless to act. Is this because we have lost, or one might say we never had, a moral compass? Is it because, in truth, as long as it doesn’t hurt us and our own immediate interests, we lose the moral will to help the underdog?

As a Jew and a supporter of Israel, I have a different perspective on this. Initially, with the Syrian uprising, it was easy to support the protesters because all they wanted was democracy, an end to the rule of a despot and freedom of expression. But that pure and positive movement has been hijacked, and now those doing the bulk of the fighting and protesting are radical Islamists. These aren’t people who want to install a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Rather, they want to implement a very rigid and retrograde type of Shariah law upon the entire population.

They have expansionist ambitions to impose their unenlightened, retrograde worldview upon the entire universe, if given the chance. This is an ideology that wants to throw all of us back to the Dark Ages, when women hade no rights and heretics were burnt at the stake. It is this ideology and the people who represent it that are the lead fighters against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. It is this ideology that is staging sit-ins to re-install President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt.

There is no doubt that the al-Assad regime is no friend of Israel’s or the West’s, and neither, frankly, is the Egyptian military. Both are corrupt, brutal and thoroughly nasty. But the choice here is not between the good guy and the bad guy. The choice we have is between the bad guy and the face of evil itself. This is an evil that manipulates the pure human desire for freedom, democracy and self-determination to install itself in power and then impose a form of oppression that is worse than anything experienced before. If we want to know why the West is dragging its feet and is in a moral quandary, these are the facts we need to consider.

I write after the Fourth of July from Grand Lake, where the holiday was marked by celebrations culminating in glorious fireworks over the water.

It really has been fun, but also cause for reflection and, if I’m to be honest, for very mixed feelings – serious doubts and harsh thoughts – some of which I express here even though they may offend and be (too easily) dismissed as “liberal-intellectual” drivel.

Indeed I myself cringe inwardly a bit as I write my heretical truths – for such is the power of our national faith.

I don’t fly flags, but a good friend, an aviator during the American war in Vietnam, flies a blue flag marked with a large image of the globe. I think he has the right idea, especially because too much of our American “liberty” of late – the economic liberty of corporations and financiers backed by a global military presence – has been paid for by much injustice and oppression around the globe. An ironic and tragic reversal of our own Declaration of Independence from such colonial oppression.

Having lived in both Canada and Australia, having seen their more gradual evolution into liberties that at least equal our own, I have no simple-minded enthusiasm for that original declaration and its revolution. That bloody path was chosen by our original business class in the name of their economic interests, albeit rhetorically couched in ideals about “liberty and justice for all.” That path has over time resulted in many liberties and much justice, but it was not the only, nor the best path, towards such ideals. And it probably was, at least in part, the original sin that led over time to the currently Über-militarized form of our national religion.

From the dawn of religious studies and the purported death of God, the surety and exclusivity of religious theologies have been questioned and challenged.

An equality of religious perspectives and viewpoints seem inevitable, even spiritually desirable. Through comparative religious studies we can appreciate the strengths and eccentricities of each religion, every denomination and achieve some rational distance for any one religion’s more bewildering and maddening modern shortcomings.

You can acclaim one religion for its meditation techniques and compassion, yet wonder if it leads to passivity. You can delight in the nurturing family life another religion encourages, while worrying about its warrior evangelizing. You can appreciate the charity one religion spreads throughout its institutions, and deplore its inbred misogyny. And you can apply the same paradoxical response to more than one religion or denomination — Evangelical, Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox Christians; Sunni or Shiite Muslims; Orthodox Conservative or Reform Jews; Theravada, Mahayana or Tibetan Buddhists; Hindus’ Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Smartism or Shaktism. Most of these have offshoots, radical groups, traditionalists, heretics and fallen-away changelings. Religion is not just a cafeteria, it’s a bizarre bazaar, a supermarket!

Yet I rise to sing its praise. For all the rational value of humanism, or the rejection of religion in atheism, they feel like zero-sum enterprises. Western moderns make our way using our minds and trusting in science for what we know. Those of us raised in religion, or who have chosen to live within one, do find value in them. We can be clear-eyed about this choice; we could have rejected each by turn and stand at a distance from them all. My appreciation for various religions or elements of these religions doesn’t mean the religion I choose to live can’t be critiqued by others, or even by me. It simply means I want to be passionately committed to some religion.

I think this is especially important for young people and young families. You are smart, educated and there’s certainly enough to be cynical about in religious circles. But I urge you also to be open to a call from God, tradition, or choice to live within a religion’s value system — testing it, trying it, living and worshiping within it. Otherwise you could be stuck in noncommittal neutrality, which may be the opposite of a belief you could choose.

Where is your moral compass pointing? What are your social values? Hark will explore faith, morals, ethics and character at the intersection of religion ethics, culture, politics, media, science, education, economics and philosophy. At times this blog will alert readers to breaking news and trends. At times it will attempt to look more deeply into intriguing subjects. Hark means to listen attentively, and we will, as readers talk back to the news.